Oh yes they can.
I was working with some Hackney primary teachers and they were sharing ideas about what kinds of writing-teaching seemed to have worked. One teacher, Mark Hanley, talked about how he had originally trained in IT but switched to teaching. He said he had some Year 6 boys who really didn't want to write, didn't know what to write, didn't know what the point of writing is.
So Mark had the idea of starting up a blogspot, which this particular group of boys could contribute to. They had the idea that it should be 'horror' writing, which they called 'Chillers'. So, like any blogspot, it can be moderated by the teacher (or anyone else), it can be given design and pictures as you want. And it's free.
The school is Princess May Primary in Hackney and Mark has told me that the school has now bought the children a "small collection of iPads which they are finding some very interesting ways of using. Incredible how engaged in their work the children become when using them. I haven't yet used them in creative writing but will do very soon when we have a go at writing, performing and recording some children's poetry based on the Blitz in Hackney."
Here are the blogs from the last two years:
blogs from the last two years:
http://y6chiller.blogspot.com/
http://y6chiller2011.blogspot.com/
